Echoes of Rain

In the quiet town of Mahira, where the clouds lingered low and the rains sang lullabies, Ayan and Zoya found each other beneath a monsoon sky.

Ayan was a quiet soul—an artist who painted emotions more than people. Zoya, on the other hand, was a whirlwind of laughter and light, always barefoot in the rain, dancing like no one was watching. They met by chance at an old bookstore. She reached for a poetry book, and so did he. Their fingers touched. She smiled. He didn’t know it then, but his heart had already begun to sketch her.

Days turned into weeks. Zoya would visit Ayan’s studio with chai and wildflowers. He painted her often—never her face, only the things that reminded him of her: the rain, a sunflower, the corner of her dupatta fluttering in the wind. She read him poetry, and he listened like the words were prayers.

They never said “I love you.” They didn’t need to. Every look, every silence between them said it.

But Zoya was not free. Her parents had already arranged her engagement to a family friend in another city—someone who could offer stability, name, and tradition. Ayan was just a painter with a leaking roof and a fragile dream.

When she told him, it was raining. Of course it was.

“I’ll run away,” Zoya whispered, eyes wet with more than just the rain.

But Ayan shook his head. “You belong to the wind, Zoya. Not to a man who cages you, not even to me.”

On her wedding day, he painted one last canvas—a gray sky, one crimson dupatta flying away like a wounded bird.

Zoya left. Ayan stayed.

Years later, people still talked about the painter who stopped painting after the rain stopped falling.

And somewhere in another city, Zoya would sometimes pause when it rained, her heart aching like a poem that had lost its last line.